Page 208 of Cast in Conflict

Bellusdeo roared.

Kaylin reached out for Emmerian.

“I told you,” Mandoran murmured. “She’s going to be pissed off for days, if you’re lucky.”

Emmerian did not reply.

The moment Kaylin reached out to heal him—and she knew he’d be angry about it later, because the only immortal who willingly let her touch and heal was Bellusdeo—she knew no reply would be forthcoming.

She had touched this Shadow before, when Mandoran had been pierced and almost bisected by the weapons the altered Aerians bore. Then, she had had to listen hard to hear what it whispered—and that had landed them both in Ravellon.

She didn’t have to try at all, now. The attenuated voices she could barely hear in Mandoran felt as if they had taken control of a Dragon’s vocal chords; they were a roar of sound, and given she was physically attached to the Dragon, they were a sensation, each syllable wracking the body in which it was contained.

She didn’t recognize the language the Shadows spoke at first. It didn’t feel familiar to her in the way spoken True Words did. She wasn’t certain it mattered. What mattered here was Emmerian.

She is going to be so pissed at you, she told the silver Dragon. The Dragon who, until this particular transformation, had been blue. She knew, in a vague and inexact way that would never pass muster as knowledge, that Dragons didn’t always maintain the same color when they adopted their draconic form. She had no idea what caused the shift in color—Bellusdeo had always been gold—but assumed that it, like eye color, varied depending on the mood of the Dragon in question. Emmerian.

She is likely to be angry, yes. But the Dragon Court will be angrier, and it will not be at me.

Wait—me?

You should not be attempting to heal me. This voice buckled, thinning; she pulled it back almost unconsciously. Let go and get Bellusdeo out of here.

You’re obviously delirious with pain if you think I can tell Bellusdeo what to do.

If he wasn’t delirious, he was definitely in pain. She could see why. In the roar of non-Emmerian syllables, she could feel his flesh contracting, reshaping; she cursed in very voluble Leontine because she had seen something similar before.

I’m sorry, she told the Dragon.

He said nothing; he understood what she wanted to do: excise infected flesh completely in an attempt to prevent the body from adapting to a new normal that had little to do with Emmerian himself. In the background, she could hear and feel a second roar of sound—this one outside of Emmerian’s body, and therefore not a threat.

Except it was Bellusdeo, and Bellusdeo was angry.

No. No, she couldn’t think about that, couldn’t act on it now, or she would lose Emmerian. They would lose him.

Stop moving! she shouted, although she didn’t open her mouth.

She is hurt—

She’s pissed off. She’s angry. And she doesn’t have to be hurt for that. We have two of The Three here, on the field. If the outcaste can get through them so quickly, we never stood a chance. Stop moving.

I am attempting not to move, he replied, just a hint of anger and frustration underpinning the words.

She inhaled. What had happened to Mandoran had happened slowly. What had happened in the West March—the only other experience that was in any way similar to this—had happened quickly. Had these Shadows been the point of attack in the West March, she would not have been able to save the Barrani who’d been injured; she had time only because Emmerian was many, many times the size of a single Barrani warrior.

She almost despaired—but had she, Emmerian would have noticed instantly.

No. She had gone to Ravellon for a very brief visit because of Shadows like this. She had emerged with Mandoran and Bakkon. How?

Ah. The word. The word on her palm, the new mark. The word and the glove of Shadow. The Shadow was not the only spoken voice she could “hear.” The mark on her palm, much quieter, was in its own way a continuous march of syllables. It was the quieter part she needed to work on.

She began to speak the syllables of the new mark. She began to speak them out loud, to put all of the mechanisms of throat and lung and jaw into the pronunciation, the flow of syllables. The Shadows within Emmerian slowed, the words they spoke coming to a halt as if words were motion. She could see the mark on her palm clearly, although she couldn’t see her palm, pressed as it was against Emmerian’s silver scales.

As she focused on the word, the Shadow tendrils slowed, coming to an uneven stop in various parts of the Dragon’s flesh. They did not retreat; they spoke, the uniformity of their foreign language giving lie to the idea that they were separate entities.

She heard Emmerian’s labored breath as if it, too, were just one component of that aforementioned crowd—the member that she had come here to save. She spoke more clearly. The Shadows hissed; she saw them begin, once again, to move. She couldn’t physically reach into Emmerian’s body to touch them, as she had with the wall. She had to force them out.

Had to excise the small trails of flesh that were no longer entirely Dragon. Was this what had happened to the outcaste? Was the outcaste enslaved, just as Bellusdeo had been?

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